Leon Goetz's Mann Act Indictment
I started this website two years ago as a sort of running documentation of my research on the Goetz Movie Theater in Monroe, WI. A few weeks into my work I stumbled across press clippings regarding Leon Goetz’s 1921 indictment under the Mann Act (1910), the anti-organized prostitution act. The Mann Act became a touchy subject over the last sixty years because while it protects all women and children from exploitation, the facts on the ground were that it protected White women and children from exploitation by “ethnic” gangs— Blacks, Italians, Irish and especially Jewish gangs, the world’s leading White-Slavers prior to WWII. Here is Cornell Law School on the Mann Act:
The Mann Act (also known as the White-Slave Traffic Act of 1910) is a federal law that criminalizes the transportation of “any woman or girl for the purpose of prostitution or debauchery, or for any other immoral purpose.”
Somewhere among the ruble of the twentieth century it became a faux pas to protect White women and children against predation from these criminal organizations. Any law that worked to this effect became tainted with ‘badness’, more from Cornell:
The Mann Act, passed in June 1910 and named after Illinois Congressman James R. Mann, invoked the Commerce Clause to felonize the use of interstate or foreign commerce to transport women for immoral purposes. The Act was aimed at prostitution, immorality, and human trafficking. Congress appointed a commission in 1907 to investigate into the problem of immigrant prostitutes. It was alleged that immigrant women were brought to America for sexual slavery and immigrant men lured American girls into prostitution (or “white slavery”). The committees believed that no girl would enter prostitution unless drugged or held captive. This led to public outrage which eventually resulted in the enactment of the Mann Act.
However, many critics note that the Act ended up criminalizing many kinds of consensual sexual activity and had racist undertones. The phrase “immoral purpose” was broadly used to prosecute unlawful premarital, extramarital, and interracial relationships following Caminetti v. United States (1917), where the United States Supreme Court held that “illicit fornication,” even when consensual, constituted an “immoral purpose.” It didn’t matter if the woman consented, the man would be liable irrespectively; furthermore, if the woman consented, she could be held as an accessory to the crime. While the Act was never repealed it was amended a few times, the most notable of which were in 1978 to address issues of child pornography and in 1986 to address the Act’s misuse against consensual sex by replacing the phrase “any other immoral purpose” with “any sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense.”
Students of the battle to legitimize pornography and prostitution in the USA will notice the tell-tale signs of apologists for pimps in the ‘legal reasoning’ above: “The committees believed that no girl would enter prostitution unless drugged or held captive.” The fact of the matter is that trafficked people were very often trapped with drug addictions, debt slavery, psychological conditioning (usually from childhood) and fear of violence— they usually were captives in some way until they hit 35 and were no longer saleable. Very often— then as now— when law enforcement or social services tried to help trafficking victims they were confronted with the Gordian Knot of deprogramming “us-vs-them” cult psychology. (An excellent description of this cult psychology with respect to sex trafficking is available in Charles von Onselen’s The Fox and the Flies, see “Rachel Laskin” pages 3-6.)
And this programming could be deeply entrenched. The economic realities of the sex trade were (and are) that trafficked adults usually start as trafficked children. Prostitutes almost always “consented” after grooming, indoctrination or other types of emotional or physical abuse. Where battling the White Slave Trade was successful, law enforcement focused on protecting at-risk children (see The Women Police of Poland (1925 to 1939), by Stanisława Paleolog). This book is very hard to get, if you’d like to see relevant passages, email me from my contact page. In crucial respects the 1907 committees had a better understanding of pimping than almost all modern academics and a great many legal experts.
Rep. James Robert Mann, the Illinois congressman responsible for taking a bite out of our trafficking problem. Mann was a member of the Republican Party and a Midwestern Progressive.
I’ve spent the better part of two years hunting and pecking for documentation regarding Leon’s Mann Act indictment. I wanted to have all the evidence I could get on this particular aspect of Leon’s history before I wrote my book on The Goetz movie theater.
It turns out that I’m unlikely to ever find this documentation: it may be in the National Archives’ “Department of Justice” collection at College Park, MD but the holdings there aren’t well organized enough for me to know before I go (or even provide much guidance as to where I should look). Documentation may equally be held at the Chicago, IL satellite campus, or in Kansas City, MO… I could spend a lot of money and time looking.
At the end of the day, the chances are that Leon’s indictment paper-trail wasn’t held on long enough to even make it into the National Archives. There was no trial, no conviction and, for reasons I’ll explore in this post, the federal investigation into organized prostitution and military drug trafficking of which Leon Goetz was almost certainly a part was ‘disappeared’. Important people probably didn’t want lingering evidence.
While I don’t have DoJ paperwork on Leon’s indictment, I do know from contemporary press reports that the US Attorney spearheading the federal investigation was named Phillip H. Ward. Ward had only just been appointed as an Assistant US Attorney one month prior to when Leon faced his civil human trafficking lawsuit (December 1921). Seven months later in July 1922, Ward went after Leon with a federal charge, making Leon one of the first men Ward indicted around the Freeport, IL trafficking ring.
If the federal and civil cases against Leon alleged a crime that Leon actually committed (we’ll never know, the cases were quashed before they went to trial because of federal intervention), then Leon was acting as an “alfonse”: a man (usually far younger than 30 year-old Leon) who lured a women/child into prostitution in order to sell them to a prostitution syndicate. Alfonses did the grunt-labor of organized pimping and unrequited love/grooming techniques played a big part in their luring process. It would be rare for these boys/young men to have more than four or five girls ‘in process’ at any one time. The Galician Network would have needed thousands of ‘alfonses’ to maintain operations. (See Prostitution and Prejudice, Bristow.)
In the case of Northern Illinois in the 1920s, the crime syndicate to which Leon would have sold his alleged victim, Marjorie Howe, was controlled by a man named John Patrick Looney. All indications are that Ward was appointed to clean up the Looney mess.
The Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Illinois), 11 Nov 1921, Page 28. The Rock Island Argus was the newspaper of the critics of Rock Island underworld kingpin John Patrick Looney. Looney returned to Rock Island, IL in 1921 after a type of exile following 1912 rioting there. That the Argus would be so pleased to announce Ward’s appointment speaks volumes about Ward’s intentions towards Looney’s prostitution and extortion network, which extended down to Kansas City. Kansas City was a 1920s pornography hub, see my post on Leon’s future business partner Albert Dezel. Note how Freeport, IL is the focus of Ward’s efforts.
Monroe Evening Times, Dec. 8th, 1921. (Monroe, WI) This is the earliest account I have of the civil trafficking suit against Leon Goetz. The settlement in 1923 showed that the basis for damages was the human trafficking of Marjorie to Freeport for immoral purposes.
Wisconsin State Journal, July 8th 1922. This arrest was the result of the federal charge, rather than the civil one Howe brought the previous December.
During the Nov. 1921- Summer 1923 period in Ward’s career, press reports show he was investigating a massive interstate criminal network which I will call the “Goldman Gang”. The Goldman Gang comprised a network of junkyard owners who dealt in military surplus, stolen merchandise, drug running and human trafficking for prostitution a.k.a. “White Slave Trading”. (Pretty much what you’d expect to find in Galicia, or along any railway line in Eastern Europe prior to 1918 under the Hapsburgs.) This was a massive gang and prosecuting them would have taxed the resources of a team of attorneys, let alone one. Leon’s brush with Ward corresponds with Ward’s Goldman Gang prosecutions both chronologically, geographically and in the nature of the offenses (Mann Act indictments). In addition, Ward had a hard time finding “credible” witnesses making Leon, a drug-free, 30-something businessmen, a potentially valuable resource for the prosecution.
Leon Goetz was never convicted on the Mann Act charge because the case didn’t go to trial. Therefore, I cannot say “Leon Goetz was a periphery member of the Goldman Gang” but all indications are that this is precisely what he was. We can say beyond reasonable doubt that US Attorney Ward would have considered Leon valuable for his Goldman investigation as it centered around trafficking in Freeport, IL.
In December, 1921, when Leon faced his first Mann Act allegations, a Junk dealership/military surplus concern, like the ones which characterized the Goldman Gang, took premises just off the historic Square in downtown Monroe— i.e. the auction locale was a neighboring business to Leon Goetz’s Washington and Monroe movie theaters! Monroe Evening Times, Dec. 29th, 1921.
The Military Surplus/auction site took premises by Frank Lanz’s hardware store, which was a locally recognized establishment, unlike the surplus store. Don’t know who Edith May is?
Dr. Walker’s Orthodontics now occupies the building where the military surplus, etc. auctioneers took premises.
Philip H. Ward came from the small town of Sterling, IL which lies on a Mississippi River tributary called the Rock River, the main transport route between Kansas City and Chicago. Law enforcement in Sterling would have been well versed in trafficking problems which, in the 1920s, found a hub a little way downstream at Rock Island, IL.
Today, Rock Island has been consumed by Davenport, IL, but Rock Island has been a hub of organized crime since the time of the “Banditti of the Prairies” (1840s and earlier). These outlaws— currency counterfeiters— gruesomely murdered the Indian agent/merchant Col. George Davenport, after whom the modern city is named. The Banditti were active in the counterfeit currency trade around the same time as the Mormons were under Joseph Smith Jr. and Brigham Young (see Kathleen Melanakos, Secret Combinations, pages 251-4). There was probably considerable overlap between the leadership of these two criminal gangs. For Monroe, WI’s role in this counterfeiting underworld, see here.
Rock Island has become part of Davenport, IL, down river from Sterling. Dixon, IL, just a short ways up river from Sterling, is the hometown of former president Ronald Regan.
In the 1920s when Ward was assistant US attorney, Rock Island’s crime-boss was John Patrick Looney, scion of a well-to-do Irish immigrant family who joined with other local organized crime families who were already entrenched in local government. Looney was forced to leave Rock Island after gang-related rioting in 1912; he returned and bought a newspaper in 1921, about the time Ward was appointed US attorney. This return appears to have been the event which precipitated Ward’s scramble against Looney’s criminal network, because violence broke out between Looney’s men and other criminals when he came back.
The following Fall (1922) Ward’s mass arrests of dope-dealers and pimps (including the Goldman family) began in haste. Leon, who had been pinched in July 1922, operated in Southern Wisconsin (Monroe, Janesville) more than Northern Illinois, therefore Leon came from a territory which was near the heart, but not quite the heart, of the embattled Looney network (Rock Island- Kansas City).
Paul Newman as “John Rooney” a.k.a. John Patrick Looney in Sam Mendes’ 2002 The Road to Perdition, yet another offering in Hollywood’s love affair with White Slavers.
Ward’s indictment was NOT Leon’s first brush up against the Mann Act. We know that on December 2nd, 1921, Leon Goetz obtained warrant charging “defamation of character” in Monroe, WI through Justice of the Peace Baltzer. Details of “gossip” which lead to alleged “defamation” were not printed, but eleven days later local farmer Emery Howe brought a civil case against Leon Goetz in Freeport, IL in relation to damages against his daughter, Marjorie. On that same same day, Leon’s wife sold his theater to Alvin Marti for $1 i.e. she sold it under duress. (Days prior Leon had sold the theater to his wife for $1.) Leon immediately moved to Janesville, WI. It was seven months later, while Leon was living in Janesville, that Ward had Leon arrested on federal charges that were brought in Freeport. In the summer of 1923 Emery Howe would settle his civil case against Leon on the same day that Ward was compelled by his superiors in Washington D.C. to drop the Mann Act charges against Leon.
Monroe Evening Times, Dec 2nd, 1921. While fighting the local Women’s Christian Temperance Union over the way he ran his business, Leon sought out the police to quash talk about him. Just how bad Leon’s reputation was may have come as a surprise to The Time’s partisan editor Odell. The Times garnered a lot of advertising revenue from Leon’s theaters.
These Mann Act charges hit Leon at a time which was already difficult. Since 1916, Monroe’s non-Universalist community leaders had tried to dialogue with Leon about the way he ran his business. The most culturally insensitive action on Leon’s part was to insist on Sunday showings of films, some of which were considered inappropriate. His live-action features, which included under-age chorus girls, offended the morals of a wide swath of the community. In addition, Leon was known to run illegal gambling from his pool-den, another questionable side business to his Washington and Monroe theaters. The leaders of these community efforts— which were supported by many hundreds of people according to the Milwaukee Sentinel— were executives from the Women’s Christian Temperance Union (W.C.T.U.) and the pastor of St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran church. (This church is two blocks south of 1123 16th Ave pictured above. The president of the W.C.T.U., Mrs. Caradine, did not personally represent the organization in this case, as her husband was the district attorney who was helping Leon with the “defamation” suit!!)
There were a number of reasons for the local community to organize against Leon, but the easiest way to put pressure on him was through his violation of the “Blue Laws”, ie. showing films on Sundays. Monroe’s street-wise population, which included the ladies of the W.T.C.U. (a leading anti-trafficking organization) and leaders of the Lutheran community, would have watched in horror at what unfolded in Freeport after Leon’s flight to Janesville and his arrest the following July (1922). (Monroe’s Universalists might have watched in horror too, but for very different reasons!!)
So what was the series of events which lead to Leon Goetz’s near-undoing?
In February 1922, a truckload of men were caught stripping Camp Grant of a mind-boggling amount of goods and building fixtures. Camp Grant was a WWI-era Army encampment south of Rockford, IL which had been constructed as part of of the Roosevelt-Wilson WWI war effort. (So by 1922 it had faded from public vision.) 500 buildings in the camp had been stripped of furniture, blankets, clothes, toilets, baths, everything re-saleable that you can imagine. These goods were stashed in remote farms while a network of (largely Jewish) junkyard owners between Chicago and Madison sold them on to the general public.
An aerial photograph of Camp Grant outside Rockford, IL. This sprawling campus was active only a year (late 1917-late 1918) and had been mothballed for two/ three years when the Goldman Gang began their looting.
I will point out here that WWI was very good for the Stateside Jewish Mafia, (a.k.a. “Supermob”) which was largely comprised of recent immigrants or sons of recent immigrants from formerly Hapsburg/Romanov borderlands. These mobsters were remarkably effective partnering with corrupt members of the US military. (Just like they were under the Hapsburgs!)
One such band of Chicago bar-operators/pimps/military re-salers surnamed “Chess” (actually “Chez” or “Czyż”) immigrated from Motol on the Poland/Russian border at around the time of Leon’s indictment. The Chess clan preyed on working-class Black communities and founded “Chess Records” a.k.a. Muddy Waters’ record label in the 1940s. They then went on to represent The Rolling Stones in the USA, while their capo Jim Levy managed Activision, CIA director William Colby’s favorite computer game company. The seed-money (and seed-connections) for the Chess empire came from reselling military surplus (used cardboard and bottles….) via their Chicagoland junkyard in the post-WWI era, just like the Goldmans.
Mick Jagger of The Rolling Stones and Marshall Chess, grandson to Josef Chez of Motol, hash out some counter-culture product.
Chess Records would eventually become a subsidiary (retaining executive talent) of Activision, the gaming company, which worked with William Colby of the CIA to build a recruiting tool called “Spycraft: The Great Game”. This computer game, which was developed when mafioso like Larry Summers and the Harvard Institute for International Development were colonizing Russia, is now a political liability for the agency and a documentary CIA-splain'n it will be released in 2023.
This is the poster for the new documentary, check out the press.
My point is, readers, that junkyard army-surplus dealers around Chicago had powerful friends.
Bearing this in mind, let’s get back to the quashing of Leon’s federal sex-trafficking investigation. The February 1922 Camp Grant looters were quickly traced back to a network of junkyard owners and dope dealers. The dope connection is particularly strong around Rockford, IL where much of the looted material was transported. The first man pinched on the Rockford dope angle was Robert J. “Sweet Lips” Loftus. Loftus was believed to distribute drugs for a Chicago gang and was apprehended with “dope” manufactured in Germany. Later it was revealed that this gang specialized in selling dope to prison inmates and military personnel. (Given Imperial German prominence in the narcotics trade and espionage activity in Mexico during WWI, that these drugs were systematically supplied to servicemen is particularly worrying.)
Freeport Journal-Standard, Sept 20, 1922.
Eleven days later, on Halloween 1922, Loftus was indicted by Ward for violating narcotics laws. At the same time Ward indicted 14 people involving Camp Grant crimes, including theft and Mann Act violations. Ward brought the cases with assistance from a special investigator named Wood from Chicago. Two of the men indicted, John C. Krause and Carlos Guerrero/Guerro, both residing in Beloit ,WI (i.e. in Leon’s territory) were charged with violating the Mann Act as well as conspiring to steal government property and receiving stolen government property (from Camp Grant). No other members of the Goldman Gang besides these Beloit, WI figures were charged with human trafficking at that time.
November 6th saw further trouble for the dope dealers. Anna Goldman and her twenty year old daughter, Lillian, were arrested for selling dope that had come directly from Camp Grant: they were arrested in a Chicago auto garage with a large quantity of drugs and paraphernalia in their car. Concurrently forty-three other “violators of dope law”, all of whom were affiliated with junkyards, were arrested. This bunch represented two dope distribution rings, one run out of a Rock Island junkyard owned by A. D. Harris (i.e. a junkyard in Looney’s hometown) and the other being run out of Mrs. Goldman’s husband’s junkyard in Freeport. These rings specialized in sales of dope to jail inmates, they were moving product from Camp Grant as well as wider supply networks in Chicago. Harris was found with quantities of cocaine, morphine, atrophine, strychnine, opium, quinine and “numerous other narcotics”. (The Rock Island Argus, December 4, 1922.)
The Chicago Tribune, November 7th, 1922.
Mrs. Goldman’s husband, David, was at the same time indicted for his participation in the Camp Grant thefts— it turned out that he and the alleged White Slaver in Beloit surnamed Krause were the employers of the Camp Grant looters, who would bring stolen items back to their respective garage/junkyards and strip them down, etc. Drugs were smuggled out of the camp inside stolen and legitimately auctioned merchandise, necessitating the connivance of military personnel in the scheme.
The Daily Sentinel (Woodstock, Illinois) , December 14 th, 1922
The Dispatch (Moline, Illinois), November 27, 1922
Chicago Tribune (Chicago, Illinois), November 26, 1922
Who oversaw the Camp Grant “laxity”? The Kinmundy Express (Kinmundy, Illinois), April 12, 1923. Bell came from a famous military family who enjoyed control of provisioning the Northern Army during the civil war. Prior to that, they came from the military-industrial complex around Philadelphia just like the Twinings.
Was Harris part of Looney’s Rock Island vice network? The Rock Island Argus, its anti-Looney paper, was exceptionally aggressive in reporting Harris’ drug arrest and subsequent shaming. Harris had been known to Argus readers previously because of his irresponsible management of war surplus inventory which lead to a dangerous munitions explosion.
The Rock Island Argus (Rock Island, Illinois), November 24, 1922. This is a small sampling of the Argus’ reporting, which included a massive front page spread alongside reports of Looney corruption. The Argus was the only paper to print an image associated with Ward’s investigations.
John C. “Jake” Krause’s story provides insight into how the grooming process worked in Northern Illinois— much like the “alfonses” worked in London, Budapest, Cernowitz or anywhere the Galician Network put down roots. When Krause was picked up so was a 19 year old Mexican named Carlos “Guerrores” or “Guerro” who was active in Dixon, IL. Older pimps like to use men/teen boys near the age of their targeted trafficking victims in order to lower victims’ defenses. In turn, “alfonses” like Guerro saw grooming as a first step on the ladder to more lucrative and easier criminal opportunites. This “alfonse” strategy also exploited authorities’ reluctance to prosecute very young people.
Guerro’s case is typical. A Chicago judged named George A. Carpenter released the teen on his own recognizance. Guerro immediately abused this gesture and failed to appear in court. He was later picked up and jailed until his new court date. What the press and justice system representatives said in Carlos’ defense highlights widespread ignorance of grooming techniques and a tendency by the justice system to blame the victim:
Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, Illinois), November 1st, 1922
This isn’t just a 1920s problem, either. In the interview below, conducted by investigative journalist Nick Bryant, Franklin Scandal trafficking survivor Alisha Owen explains prevalent attitudes inside the Justice Department, when it comes to sex traffickers.
Given the attitudes expressed by Judge Carpenter, what happened next with the Goldman Gang shouldn’t be too surprising. Important Rockford bankers and industrial magnates spoke to the court on David Goldman’s behalf (from “Further Testimony in Goldman Case Heard in Federal Court Today”) :
Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, Illinois), December 6, 1922.
The locally-sourced jury even begged the judge for lenience on David Goldman, who was in fact given a very light sentence. With regard to his wife and daughter’s trial, suddenly there was a dearth of reliable witnesses. Hearings began to be delayed: first for the Goldman women, then for Rock Island ringleader A. D. Harris.
Herald and Review (Decatur, Illinois), November 14, 1922
The Dispatch (Moline, Illinois) December 7, 1922,
And despite being caught red-handed with a car full of government-sourced dope, the Goldman women walked.
Herald and Review (Decatur, Illinois), November 21, 1922
Eventually United States Commissioner Stanley Vance even released the Camp Grant bandits!
Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, Illinois), December 20, 1922
Who are these “United States Commissioners” (Vance and Glass) who kicked the legs out from under US Attorney Ward’s Goldman Gang prosecutions? According to Charles A. Lindquist in his paper “The Origin and Development of the United States Commissioner System”:
United States Commissioners have played a rather unique role in the history of federal judicial administration. Created primarily in response to the state’s unwillingness to enforce unpopular federal laws in the early nineteenth century, the commissioner performs judicial functions for the federal government that are somewhat analogous to those performed by local magistrates or justices of the peace for the states. (Lindquist, C. A. (1970). The Origin and Development of the United States Commissioner System. The American Journal of Legal History, 14(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.2307/844516)
The federal government— Washington D.C.— sent in a proxy judge to quash a federal investigation going in the direction of army-sponsored drug smuggling and concomitant human trafficking at a time Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Josephus Daniels were busy wiping prostitution from the US Navy’s reputation. (They were also cleaning house in the wake of the 1913 ‘Redl’ Scandal, which involved several intelligence agencies and brought intense scrutiny on the Austro-Hungarian intelligence community/organized crime scene.)
Weird things started to happened with US Attorney Ward’s family, too. In December, when US Commissioners began to deconstruct his Goldman Gang prosecutions, a thirty-something divorcee from Chicago began a relationship with Ward’s elderly father. A marriage quickly ensued, and an expensive divorce followed within months.
St. Louis Globe-Democrat (St. Louis, Missouri) . June 8, 1923. This paper comes from the Southern border of Looney’s network. Most of the newspapers which have helped me untangle Midwestern financial corruption from the 1830s onward have come from Southern states, which were generally better at addressing financial crime than their Northern neighbors.
While powerful forces acted through the US Commissioners, equally powerful forces compelled US Attorney Ward to persist with Camp Grant prosecutions. A few months later the Goldman women we again arrested for drug-dealing in Chicago in February, 1923. Fortunately for them, Commissioner Vance was back on the case.
Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, Illinois). February, 13 1923.
The above announcement is the last time the Goldman women’s names hit the paper; if they were convicted then Department of Justice records somewhere inside the the National Archives system are, I believe, our only way of knowing. The press was silent.
Attorney Ward did bring more theft indictments on April 18th, 1923: one “Jacob H. Krause” of Freeport and a “Joseph Goldman” were indicted for Camp Grant larceny, while one “Hubbard Hunt” of Jeffersonville Indianna, was indicted for forging a government check at Camp Grant. (Belvidere Daily Republican (Belvidere, Illinois), April 18, 1923.) I have no records on how these cases progressed.
Predictably, as problems started to go away for Harris and the Goldmans, they started to go away for Leon Goetz, too. Superiors forced Attorney Ward to drop the case against Leon on April 26th, 1923; shortly thereafter Emery Howe’s civil lawsuit against Leon was also settled.
Freeport Journal-Standard (Freeport, Illinois), April 26, 1923. Howe’s civil case was filed before Leon’s federal indictment, not subsequent to it.
While justice may not have come for Leon via the courts, it did via public opinion. Leon was basically run out of Monroe, WI. His career after this event went from strength to strength: he found the capital (probably with Pabst help) to build a chain of movie theaters in Southern Wisconsin and even one in smuggling-friendly Ironwood, MI. This chain was destroyed in 1927 when shady Milwaukee theater dealings dealt them a financial blow from which the Goetz theater empire could never fully recover. It was from this low-point that Leon became involved in Chicago’s film pornography scene.
It took me over two years to write this post because I wanted to understand what lead Leon to this point. I’d like to remind readers that Leon himself had a difficult childhood and a lot of bad examples. Of course, the William-Wesley-Young crowd’s exploitation of local girl Edith May blossomed over the Oct-Nov 1920 period; Leon Goetz made his movie about her Ziegfeld experiences in Spring 1921. So you could say that what happened to Leon in the winter of 1921 was the “crisis point” around which this website’s research is based. It is my intention now to start writing the Goetz book which will condense everything on this rather sprawling website down into an easy-to-read package. More soon.
